Urban Space and Political Conflict in Late Medieval Flanders (original) (raw)

Urban Space and Political Conflict in Late Medieval Flanders

EDITORs’ INTRODUCTION This essay investigates political claims over space in Ghent, urban Flanders’ largest city during the late Middle Ages. Distancing itself from the long tradition in which the Low Countries’ urban history deciphered city life principally through market relations, it argues for the independent importance of political culture. Political contests were enacted through rituals of rulership and authority performed, first, by members of the commune in the high Middle Ages and then by the politically enfranchised urban members and the Burgundian princes. Ritual space-iconic spaces-were not just the site of the contests but also the prizes. The goal was possession of these spaces and the symbols of power they bequeathed. The late medieval period was a key crucible for the formation of urban space. As important as economic life was to Low Country cities like Ghent, the market did not determine spatial arrangements so much as intersect with a set of political valences forged out of political contests between urban factions and the emerging composite state of the Burgundian Netherlands.

When considering urban history in medieval Flanders, just as in adjoining areas such as the Duchy of Brabant and the Bishopric of Liège, it is tempting to paraphrase the Gospel of John: In the beginning was the word, and the word was Pirenne. Indeed, Henri Pirenne’s scholarship on urban history has long dominated urban historiography throughout the Low Countries, and inspired a strong body of work in economic and political history. Pirenne was fascinated with questions of state formation, national identity, and the urban locus of early capitalism. Markets and the urban economy, he argued, were the engine behind urban development

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Marc Boone is Professor of History, University of Ghent. He is the author of Gent in de Bourgondische hertogen. ca. 1384-ca. 1453: Een social-politieke studie van een staatsvormingsprocess (Brussels, 1990); co-author, with Maarten Prak, of “Rulers, Patricians, and Burghers: The Great and the Little Tradition of Urban Revolt in the Low Countries,” in Karel Davids and Jan Lucassen (eds.), A Miracle Mirrored: The Dutch Revolt in European Perspective (Cambridge, 1995), 99-I34. ↩︎

in the Low Countries. Strongly influenced by German historiography at the turn of the century, Pirenne read cities as market enclaves-creations of merchants and entrepreneurs organized to serve these particular interests. 1{ }^{1}

A recent survey of the Low Countries’ urban networks illustrates just how long Pirenne cast his shadow over historiography in this region. Economic and social topics such as population, rent markets, social structures, finance, work and guilds, foreign merchants’ colonies, production and output, and urban budgets are especially prevalent, with particular attention to the relationship of cities to regional markets and state authority. Historians still credit pragmatic economic interest as the rationale for the built environment of the medieval Low Country city-that is, for the location, design, and construction of docks, marketplaces, inns, guild houses, etc. Recently, Blockmans wrote that “the urban space in the most urbanized regions of the Low Countries was a direct reflection of the needs of merchants and of the artisans.” Blockmans arrived at this conclusion after having noted that two important peculiarities of the social structure in the Flemish and Brabantine cities make them clearly distinct from their better known Italian counterparts: the absence of the nobility (and hence of the magnificent private residences that they constructed in cities) and the absence of a court-except perhaps in Brussels-that would have imposed its imprint on internal urban space. The “field” was free for merchants and artisans to fill up open space according to their tastes and financial possibilities, reflecting their burgher values. 2{ }^{2}

This essay departs from this strict economic understanding of space to explore how urban groups and institutions in late medieval Flanders managed space in ways that blended economics with other political concerns. Space is part of a larger construction; it is not an unchanging part of the stage that reflects the structural imperative of the urban economy and its institutions. Moreover, the absence of key groups and institutions, such as the nobility or the

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I For this historiographical tradition, see Martha Howell, "The Spaces of Late Medieval Urbanity, in Boone and Peter Stabel (eds.), Shaping Urban Identity in Late-Medieval Europe: The Use of Space and Images (Louvain, 2000), 3-23. On Pirenne and urban history, see Walter Prevenier, “Henri Pirenne et les villes des anciens Pays-Bas au bas moyen âge,” in La fortune historiographique des thézes d’Henri Pirenne (Brussels, 1986), 27-30.
2 Wim Pieter Blockmans, “Urban Space in the Low Countries 13th-16th Centuries,” Annali della Facoltà di Scienze Politiche, XXIX (1993/94), 166. ↩︎

princely court, does not imply that political power and the struggle for such power was without influence on the shaping of urban space. The relations among social and political groups, and the political culture of the various civic regimes, played itself out in public and, as a consequence, shaped space. Urban space offered urban factions concrete sites for consolidating power relations among themselves and staging, often theatrically, the conflicts between the city and its princely rivals. In other words, the ideas of Geertz and Tilly join those of Pirenne in a polyphonic chorus. “Fare città,” as the cry went in Florentine chronicles of the fourteenth century, typically the result of “correre la città” running through the city streets to conquer its space. 3{ }^{3}

The point of departure herein for teasing out issues of spatial power is the conflict between late medieval Flemish urban regimes and the princely authorities. Applying spatial analysis to a chronology of events well known to Low Country historians, and often attributed to the rise and fall of guild-based civic regimes, reveals that much of what animated change and conflict is the remarkable jockeying for power that centered on specific places rich in symbols of economic, cultural, and political prestige. Economic interests were indispensable, but they were realized only in the act of seizing and marking such public and private places as buildings, town halls, belfries, market squares, parish churches, and the like.

THE LEGACY OF THE COMMUNE: STAGING FLEMISH CITIES IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY During the thirteenth century, principal Flemish cities, notably Bruges and Ghent, underwent important changes in their spatial design. Some forces for change, such as the mendicant orders and beguinages that arrived in that period,

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3 On space as part of a larger whole, see also the remarks by Stabel, “Stedelijke instellingen en stedelijke economie: ambachten en marktreguleringen in de laatmiddeleeuwse en vroegmoderne steden van het graafschap Vlaanderen,” in Prevenier and Beatrijs Augustyn (eds.), De Vlaamse instellingen tijdens het Ancien Régime: recent onderzoek in nieuw perspectief (Brussels, 1999), i i-25. For a discussion of the various terms used to describe political change in Italian cities-not unlike the situation in the Low Countries, as shown by the similar terminology used by, for instance, the Liège chronicler Jean de Hocsem-Ulrich Meier, “Molte rivoluzioni, molte novità. Gesellschaftlicher Wandel im Spiegel der politischen Philosophie und im Urteil von Städtischen Chronisten des späten Mittelalters,” in Jürgen Miethke and Klaus Schreiner (eds.), Sozialer Wandel im Mittelalter. Wahrnehmungsformen, Erklärungsmuster, Regelungsmechanismen (Sigmaringen, 1994), 148-149, 159-160 (about Hocsen). Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973); Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992 (Cambridge, Mass., 1992). ↩︎

came largely from the outside; others, however, were generated internally. Of special interest to historians is how cities marshaled public space as an act of economic domination over the countryside. The best examples are the canals that both Ghent and Bruges financed to make a direct link to the sea and to international trade, along with the network of little harbors and towns along the Zwin (Sint-Anna-Ter-Muide, Hoeke, Monnikerede, and Lamminsvliet) controlled by Bruges. Space inside the city was also reorganized and reshuffled. The big Flemish cities grew impressively during the course of the thirteenth century. The need to house all newcomers inspired municipal authorities to acquire, often through outright purchase, open spaces still available within the cities’ walls, many of which were relics of old seigniorial possessions. Thanks to abundant documentation, this transfer of property is relatively well known. The demolition of part of Bruges around I200 to redirect the city toward its Zwin-harbors gave birth to speculative ground sales and the development of suburbs outside the old walls.

In addition, as urban archaeology in particular has revealed, internal changes point to a deliberate political choice to “stage” the city. The cases of Ghent and Lille best illustrate this phenomenon. Lille’s central square (now the Place Charles de Gaulle) and Ghent’s Friday Market seem to have been constructed in the thirteenth century on a previously inhabited location. The same phenomenon occurred in Ypres and smaller cities like Diksmuide, Damme, or Veurne. Moreover, in Ghent, Lille, and Ypres, local authorities redirected the rivers and created docks as a result of important building in the surrounding area. 5{ }^{5}

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4 Boone, “Brügge und Gent um I250: die Entstehung der flämischen Städtelandschaff,” in Wilfried Hartmann (ed.), Europas Städte zwischen Zwang und Freiheit. Die europäische Stadt um die Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, 1995), 97-I io. On the oldest history of Damme, the central point where both the canal dug by Ghent and the canal linking Damme with Bruges came together, see Adriaan Verhulst, Thérèse de Hemptinne, and Lieve de Mey, “Un tarif de tonlieu inconnu institué par le comte de Flandre Thierry d’Ahace (II28-1 168) pour le port de Littersuerua, précurseur du port de Damme,” Bulletin de la Commission Royale d’Histoire, CLXIV (1998), 160-162. Marc Ryckaert, Brugge: Historische stedenatlas van België (Brussels, 1991), 68-82; Hans van Werveke, Kritische studiën betreffende de geschiedenis van de stad Gent (Antwerp, 1933), 67-76.
5 For Lille, see G. Bliek and A. Guiffray, “Genèse et évolution d’une place publique. L’exemple de Lille,” in P. Demolon (ed.), Archéologie des villes dans le Nord-Ouest de l’Europe (VIIe-XIIIe siècle) (Douai, 1994), 219-221. For Ghent, see Marie Christine Laleman, "Espaces ↩︎

These interventions are linked to the prolonged economic growth that attained its climax during the second half of the thirteenth century. This “Indian summer” of medieval economic growth, together with demographic pressure, surely accounts for the funding of these important public works. But as Crouzet-Pavan has made clear in her comparative study of space in Venice and Genoa, similar factors do not necessarily produce the same outcome. Whereas Venice at the end of the thirteenth century, because of the emergence of a centralized political power, had a central public space upon which the republic could stage its political rituals of unity, Genoa, by contrast, remained an extremely compartmentalized city. This difference is a reminder that economic rationale alone does not explain a chronologically similar trajectory of urban development; political calculation weighs heavily, too. 6{ }^{6}

The history of late thirteenth-century Flemish cities has been written all too often with regard to the “democratic revolution” of I3O2 and the takeover of political power within the cities by artisans and guild representatives. The relative ease with which the governing elite, or “patriciate,” was eliminated has tempted historians to assume that this group was already exhausted in the thirteenth century and that its regime was then as weak as it was in I3O2. Accordingly, the numerous manifestations of social unrest from the I250s onward have been-too easily-interpreted as forebodings of what was to come in I3O2. Among its many problems, this view both underestimates the vigor of the patrician regimes and fails to appreciate the nuances at work in the collective social actions of protest. During the thirteenth century, for example, the members of the cities’ patriciate, as scabini Flandriae, served

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publics dans les villes flamandes au moyen âge: l’apport de l’archéologie urbaine," in Boone and Stabel (eds.), Shaping Urban Identity, 25-4I. Most of the results of these excavations have not yet been published. I am grateful to Marc Dewilde at the Instituut Archeologisch Patrimonium for the information. See also a report by Anton Ervynck for the “Archaologica Medievalis” conference, Ghent, 1999 (forthcoming). Concerning Ypres, see Verhulst, “Les origines de la ville d’Ypres (XIe-XIIIe siècles),” Revue du Nord, LXXXI (1999), I2. In Ypres, the Ieperleet, a canal linking Ypres with Bruges, was doubled in size c. I270 to join the new industrial suburb, the “verdronken weiden,” to the existing waterways.
6 Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, "Cultures et contre-cultures: à propos des logiques spatiales de l’espace public Vénitien, "in Boone and Stabel (eds.), Shaping Urban identity, 89-108. In more general terms about northern Italian towns, see idem, "Politique urbaine et stratégie de pouvoir dans l’Italie urbaine, "in Denis Menjot and Jean-Luc Pinol (eds.), Enjeux et expressions de la politique municipale (XIIe-XXe siècles) (Paris, 1997), 7-20. ↩︎

as aldermen not just for their own city but also for the whole county. In that capacity, their authority rivaled that of the ruling comital dynasty, empowering them even to conclude commercial treaties with foreign dignitaries-one such being the king of England, in 1208.71208 .{ }^{7}

The formal college of the scabini Flandriae is better documented from I240 onward. Its members make it clear to the outside world that the interests of their class dovetailed with the interests of city and county. Archeological discoveries point to a deliberate policy on their part to embellish the built environment to reflect that their social capital bespoke the possession of land and houses-all the more reason to investigate a link between the political actions of this elite and Flemish urban design. After all, the patricians time and again posed as defenders of le bien commun, as they had done since the first documented conflict in which urban interests were at stake in 1127/28.81127 / 28 .{ }^{8}

The early urban institutions of twelfth- and thirteenthcentury Flanders were greatly indebted to the “communal” movement, which swept over northern France and subsequently influenced the great cities of Flanders. Traditional historiography has read these communes as political failures, ignoring their achievement in forging urban identities and expressing social values. These older studies often mimicked the original ecclesiastical opponents of the communes by perpetuating their moral and political condemnation. Recent research corrects this view, however, by revealing how the urban elites, brought to power by the

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7 Much of the established view concerning I302 is anchored in nineteenth-century historiography. See Veronique Lambert, “De Guldensporenslag van faits-divers tot ankerpunt van de Vlaamse identiteit (I302-1838): de natievormende functionaliteit van historiografische mythen,” Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, CXV (2000), 365-392. The basic study of the representative institutions remains Jan Dhondt, “Les origines des Etats de Flandre,” in Anciens Pays et Assemblées d’Etat, Standen en Landen, I, (1950), 20-27.
8 For a strong, but not convincing, attack on the notion of the patriciate, see Alain Derville, “Les élites urbaines en Flandre et en Artois,” in Les élites urbaines au moyen âge. XXVIIe congrès de la S.H.M.E.S. (Paris, 1997), I26-I27. A much more nuanced view is defended by Philippe Braunstein, “Pour une histoire des élites urbaines: vocabulaire, réalités et représentations,” in ibid., 30. In general, members of this patriciate belonged to a family of proprietors of the original hereditas inside the town (as in Ghent, Douai, or Saint-Omer), or were “men” in the feudal sense of an ecclesiastical institution such as Saint-Vaast in Arras or the cathedral in Tournai. In other cases, membership in the local Hanse was the ultimate proof of patriciate status (as in Bruges or Aardenburg). See, in particular, Blockmans, “Patriziat. II Niederlande,” in Lexikon des Mittelalters (Münich, 1993), I, col. I800; Prevenier, “La bourgeoisie in Flandre au XIIIe siècle,” in Revue de l’Université de Bruxelles (1978), 412. ↩︎

communal movements, seized upon urban space to serve their political needs. Communes often emerged in cities characterized by a strong ecclesiastical presence, literally in the shadow of a cathedral. Burghers’ right to judge the private use of space within the city-as represented by the droit d’abatis (the ritual destruction of the house of an evildoer)-was one of the cornerstones of the commune’s spatial expression. So too was the capacity to issue legal instruments concerning the rule of private properties. The building of belfries and the organization of markets, halls, and walls affirmed communal identity. Key buildings figured as iconic markers on civic seals. This representational strategy was highly effective since seals accompanied legal instruments the contents of which tended to validate communal power. 9{ }^{9}

Drawing on a different historiographical tradition, that of the German Begriffsgeschichte, Oexle recently pleaded for a more equitable approach to the medieval communal movement. He maintains that the sworn unity of a medieval city was expressed through such social units as guilds and confraternities, which inevitably had a spatial dimension. Oexle sees the commune as a seedbed for a culture of rebelliousness that was only beginning to develop. The communal moment was a formative chapter of Western development, though long obscured, since its history has been subsumed under the heading of modernization, in which its manifestations are treated as embryonic and ultimately fruitless efforts. Essential to this political culture was the existence of institutionalized delegation and representation, which was capable of resolving conflicts in the interest of consensus and order. Communal action, often motivated by the search for equilibrium as a guarantee of the original coniuratio, thus put into action a powerful process with space as its indispensable arena. Urban development

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9 It is striking that the communal movement in northern France and Flanders is totally absent from Peter Blickle (ed.), Résistance, représentation et communauté (Paris, 1988). Having been decried by traditional bourgeois historiography, the communal movement’s fate seems to have been simply forgotten. The Parisian Commune set the context for the first wave of studies and source editions about the communal movements. Written by French bourgeois historians, for whom the reminder of the commune must have been nothing less than a nightmare, they had little good to say about the medieval movements. See Christian Amalvi, Le goût du moyen âge (Paris, 1996), 131-132, 200. See the remarks and critical observations concerning older literature about the commune by Alain Saint-Denis, “L’apparition d’une identité urbaine dans les villes de commune de France du Nord aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” in Boone and Stabel (eds.), Shaping Urban Identity, 65-87. See the corpus of French urban seals in Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, Corpus des sceaux français du moyen âge. I. Sceaux des villes (Paris, 1982). ↩︎

undertaken in the major Flemish cities of the thirteenth century may well capture this political dynamic. 10{ }^{10}

The social process behind the communal movement did not come to a halt once the commune was firmly established under the control of the civic patriciate. The commune’s power was subject to regular popular appraisal. Beginning in the middle of the thirteenth century, manifestations of social and political unrest, often inspired by larger waves of discontent that swept over northern France (the old playground of the communal movement), afflicted Flemish cities. A renewed reading of the standard scholarship brings spatial elements to the foreground. Movements such as the Moerlemaye in Bruges or the Cockerulle in Ypres (both dating from 1280) indicate how, instead of being revolutionary developments as the Pirennian tradition would have had it, followed a relatively fixed pattern that reveals how political and social demands were formulated in and through space by collective protest and public written grievances. 11{ }^{11}

CORPORATIVE AND POLITICAL SPACE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY When the laborers of the great drapery industries of the cities of Flanders were mobilized in opposition to the count of Flanders, the king of France, and the urban elites, they did not have to invent a new vocabulary to express their aims. They could draw on a long tradition of collective action and rebelliousness, known to scholars of the region as the “little tradition” of revolt, as distinguished from the great tradition that opposed cities to princes throughout the late Middle Ages and sixteenth century. It is revealing that in the first description of a strike in Ghent, occurring in 1302, the author-an anonymous friar-recalled how the strik-

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10 Otto Gerhard Oexle, “Die Kultur der Rebellion: Schwureinung und Verschwörung im früh- und hochmittelalterlichen Okzident,” in Marie Theres Fögen (ed.), Ordnung und Aufruhr im Mittelalter. Historische und juristische Studien zur Rebellion (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), 119-137; idem, “Gilde und Kommune. Über die Entstehung von ‘Einung’ und ‘Gemeinde’ als Grundformen des Zusammenlebens in Europa,” in Blickle (ed.), Theorien kommunaler Ordnung (forthcoming).
in See the new interpretation of the Bruges’ Moerlemaye by Thomas A. Boogaart II, “Evolution of a Communal Milieu: An Ethnography of Late Medieval Bruges, 1280-1349,” unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, 2000). Concerning the contemporary movement in Ypres, see Boone, “Social Conflicts in the Cloth Industry of Ypres (Late I3thEarly I4th Centuries): The ‘Cockerulle’ Reconsidered,” in Marc Dewilde, Errynck, and Alexis Wielemans (eds.), Ypres and the Medieval Cloth Industry in Flanders: Archaeological and Historical Contributions (Asse-Zellik,1999), 147-155. ↩︎

ers took care to occupy the streets and markets of the city using their banners and war-time insignia. Significantly, in this instance, as well as in other rebellions against princely repression, the belfry itself was not a target, only the bells, which would be used to start or sustain the commotion. Many of these bells bore inscriptions that referred to their mobilizing power. The strikers of Ghent demonstrated their mastery of all of the mobilizing tools that subsequent generations of artisans would employ to express their political discontent. 12{ }^{12}

The ascension of the artisans to political power was the biggest novelty of the early fourteenth century. Their first decades of power leave a strong but superficial image of confusion, violence, and incessant turmoil. It is clear, however, that many of the descriptions in narrative sources reflect the “official transcript” of the dominant political culture, to borrow Scott’s term. The way that contemporary (often clerical) observers depicted the protagonists of the Flemish revolt of 1323-1328 illustrates this point. The enmity of these witnesses toward the popular movements and their partisans heavily influenced nineteenth-century historiography, setting the tone for decades of historical writing about collective action and violence. The movements in which violence originated may, however, be interpreted differently, as a tool in an ongoing process of bargaining. As Oexle has so aptly remarked, medieval collective movements (indeed premodern social movements in general) should not necessarily be judged by their ultimate ends and means, as modern social movements are. Their principal aim was often to bring issues to the foreground of discussion and make them subject to political bargaining. Flemish artisans and merchants knew this sort of bargaining all too well. It was a distinct activity that took place on concrete grounds, within a given space. In his recent study of popular politics in early modern

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12 Boone and Maarten Prak, "Rulers, Patricians and Burghers: The Great and the Little Traditions of Urban Revolt in the Low Countries, in Karel Davids and Jan Lucassen (eds.), AA Minade Minored: The Dutch Revolt in European Perspective (Cambridge, 1995), 99-134. The anonymous friar’s description can be found in Fritz Funck-Brentano (ed.), Annales Gandenses (Paris, 1896), 19. On the source, see Boone, “Der anonyme Minorit von Gent Annales Gandenses,” in Volker Reinhardt (ed.), Hauptwerke der Geschichtsschreibung (Stuttgart, 1997), 14-17. On the importance of the bells, see Raymond Van Uytven, “Flämische Belfriede und südniederländische städtische Bauwerke im Mittelalter: Symbol und Mythos,” in Alfred Havekamp (ed.), Information, Kommunikation und Selbstdarstellung in mittelalterlichen Gemeinden (Munich, 1998), 132-135. ↩︎

Europe, TeBrake developed the notion of “political space” as "an arena, bounded in terms of both authority and territory, within which political bargaining can occur. In the late Middle Ages, the Flemish cities perfectly fit TeBrake’s formulation. Urban townspeople had developed a highly articulated political space, marked by the presence of such symbolic buildings as city halls and belfries in and around which political statements could be made. 13{ }^{13}

The city halls in which the aldermen convened to act as judges reflect a similar need to tie the locus of power within the city to the power to exercise organized violence. When artisans began to share the benches of aldermen with the old patrician lineages, the newly fashioned councils gave concrete form to their authority by constructing important city halls. Since the power of the new aldermen was in theory and often in practice sanctioned by the prince, statutes of the members of the reigning dynasty often adorned the façades of these halls. The relationship between those in office and the mass of city dwellers that they were supposed to govern was dialectically expressed by the bretesche, or bay window, from which official ordinances were made public. It captured both the need to communicate and the desire to keep a certain distance between officials and lay people. The newly composed benches of aldermen had a strong grip on the exercise of criminal justice, as signified by the symbols of execution (axes, swords, and chains) that hung from the façade of city halls (in I305 Bruges, for instance). The city hall was also a central spot of contestation and rebellion: Pamphlets calling for the overthrow of the sitting magistrate were often distributed in its neighborhood or

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13 James C. Scott, Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990); Wayne TeBrake, Shaping History: Ordinary People in European Politics, 1500-1700 (Berkeley, 1998), i I-I3; William TeBrake, A Plague of Insurrection: Popular Politics and Peasant Revolt in Flanders, 1323-I328 (Philadelphia, 1993), I, I I6-I I7 (which discusses the principle source of the Flemish revolt and the anonymous Chronicon comitum Flandrevisim). See the introductory remarks in Boone, “‘Armes, courses, assemblees et commocions.’ Les gens de métiers et l’usage de la violence dans la société urbaine flamande à la fin du moyen âge,” in Neithard Bult (ed.), Gewalt. Ausprägung, Wahrnehmung und Regulierung von Gewalt in der Vor moderne (in press), concerning the historiography based on such official views. For a successful example of the idea that collective violence in medieval urban conflicts can be seen as a pattern of communication and bargaining, see David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1996), 3-17. Oexle, Die Kultur der Rebellion, 137; Wayne TeBrake, Shaping History, 9. ↩︎

nailed to its doors, as during the Ghent rebellion of I45I-I453 (church doors also came into play). 14{ }^{14}

The newly empowered guilds also took care to acquire a hall or house of their own, to meet, to organize elections, and to show their wealth and prestige. Forty-three out of the fifty-eight official guilds in Ghent had their own structures. An overwhelming majority of these guild houses were concentrated in the town center. The care shown in exterior design and internal furnishings, as well as in the cultivation of social capital, underscores how guild houses were constructed with public relations and politics in mind. Their spatial visibility, however, was not limited to material goods and elements. 15{ }^{15}

The guilds maintained a high profile in the processions so important to the city’s public life. The guilds of Ghent took part in these processions in an order established shortly after their rise to power in the fourteenth century. The guilds and their symbols played a decisive role not only in conflicts with forces inside and outside the city but also in quotidian ritual activity. Arnade pointed out how the procession of St. Lievin, which yearly offered Ghent’s principal guilds a way to demonstrate corporative unity, could easily become a manifestation of urban particularism. Charles the Bold’s inaugural entry in 1467 is a case in point. The duke’s ceremony collided with the translation of St. Lieven’s relic, resulting in a riot. The struggle between the saint and the duke for

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I4 The new constitution of Ghent, subject to the I3OI Ordinance of Senlis as decreed by Philip IV, is now considered related to the building of a new city hall and the prior elaboration of the urban theater (belfry, marketplace, or parade ground, as the old denomination goes); see Laleman, “Espaces publics.” Van Uytven, “Flämische Belfriede,” I54. For the Low Countries, with references to older literature, see Jean-Marie Cauchies, “La bretèche dans les villes des anciens Pays-Bas. Contribution à l’étude de la publication des lois et règlements au moyen âge et aux temps modernes,” Revue du Nord, LXIV (1982), 233-234. Paul De Win, De schandstraffen in het wereldlijk strafrecht in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden van de middeleeuwen tot de Franse tijd (Brussels, 1991), 43, 116, I30. Prevenier and Boone, “The City-State Dream (1300-1500),” in Johan Decavele (ed.), Ghent. In Defence of a Rebellious City: History, Art, Culture (Antwerp, 1989), I05. In Bruges, pamphlets were also hung at the economic center, the beurse (the stock exchange), located amid the Italian colonies. See Boone, “State Power and Illicit Sexuality: The Persecution of Sodomy in Late-Medieval Bruges,” Journal of Medieval History, XXII (1996), 137-I38.
15 On Ghent’s guild houses, see Johan Dambruyne, “Rijkdom, materiële cultuur en sociaal aanzien. De bezitspatronen en investeringstrategieën van de Gentse ambachten omstreeks 1540,” in Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly (eds.), Werelden van verschil: Ambachtggilden in de Lage Landen (Brussels, 1997), 15I-2II. ↩︎

the same urban space reveals how a peaceful procession and a traditional entry could lose their normal function in a clash of identities. 16{ }^{16}

Religious solidarities among artisans, typically involving important relics and the spatial manifestations of their role in urban politics, often went hand in hand, even in the post-medieval corporative period. In the case of Bruges, the establishment of a guild-based government after 1302 spurred the insertion of civic symbols and themes in the procession of the Holy Blood, including the city’s most important relic. The procession gained a corporative dimension from the moment that artisans entered the ranks of aldermen and became co-responsible for the common good. Guilds became the basic ceremonial unit of the procession, the itinerary of which incorporated more artisanal quarters than before and ended with a march around the city’s perimeter. The urban landscape served as the procession’s frame and focus. By the time the Valois dukes of Burgundy became counts of Flanders, Bruges had enjoyed a well-developed tradition of civic liberties and celebrations. Although the dukes shrewdly commandeered the relic of the Holy Blood for general processions (during campaigns against the French king), the relic remained a strong civic symbol. 17{ }^{17}

16 With reference to older literature and to conflicts concerning the order in which guilds took part in processions, see Boone, Gent en de Bourgondische hertogen, ca. 1384-ca. 1455. Een sociaal-politieke studie van een staatsvormingsproces (Brussels, 1990), 74-81. Peter Arnade, “Crowds, Banners and the Marketplace: Symbols of Defiance and Defeat during the Ghent War of 1452-1453,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, XXIV (1994), 471-497. The topic has gained importance ever since. See Thomas Lentes, “Symbole du pouvoir, pouvoir du symbole. A la recherche des bannières et des porte-bannières dans les villes du moyen âge tardif,” unpub. paper (Paris, 1999). Arnade, “Secular Charisma, Sacred Power: Rites of Rebellion in the Ghent Entry of 1467,” Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, XLV (1991), 69-94.
17 Alfons K. L. Thijs, “Religieuze rituelen in het emancipatieproces van Vlaamse en Brabantse handwerksgezellen (zestiende-negentiende eeuw),” in Lis and Soly (eds.), Werken volgens de regels: Ambachten in Brabant en Vlaanderen, 1500-1800 (Brussels, 1994), 231-281; Van Uytven, “Flämische Belfriede,” 158. See the re-reading of the meanings of the Bruges’ procession by Thomas A. Boogaart II, “Our Saviour’s Blood: Procession and Community in Late-Medieval Bruges” (forthcoming). I am grateful to the author for allowing me to quote his unpublished material. The Bruges procession remains one of the most important examples of how medieval traditions were established. See Boone, “Van Heilig Bloed en Blanke Zwanen: omgaan met het middeleeuws verleden in het Brugge van de igde en 20 e eeuw, een historiografische wandeling,” in Jan Art and Luc François (eds.), Decendo discimus. Liber amiconum Romain Van Eenoo (Gent, 1999), I, 122-124. Andrew Brown, “Civic Ritual: Bruges and the Counts of Flanders in the Later Middle Ages,” English Historical Review, CXII (1997), 293 .

Purely secular manifestations of guild power through street processions were rare. Such a retinue was the Ghent auneet, a pageant of the guild militia in mid-Lent that had aldermen and their guild associates feasting and marching side by side. This example of local boosterism was timed to coincide with an important spring fair to showcase local political and economic muscle. It was, together with the weavers’ procession of Our Lady, the St. Lievin procession, and all armed collective manifestations, strictly forbidden by Charles V in his attempt to dismantle the corporative regime in 1540.181540 .{ }^{18}

URBAN SPACE AS THE BATTLEFIELD BETWEEN URBAN PARTICULARISM AND PRINCELY ABSOLUTISM The possession of Flanders in I384 by the ambitious Valois dukes of Burgundy, and their French royal ideology, marked the beginning of incessant conflict between cities and state in which princes and townspeople used political space to test their boundaries of power. The conflicts clearly reveal the meaning of urban space, since parties routinely wrestled upon the civic stage to defend their interests.

Diplomatic negotiation between city and state was routine, a safety valve against outright war. In Flanders, the dukes confronted a political culture of urban elites, institutionalized as the “Four Members,” with a strong tradition of bargaining. The county was one of those places in Europe where a robust civic sphere had developed, allowing the city to share authority with the growing monarchial state. To promote their state, the dukes participated personally, or by proxies from the dynasty or the ducal household, in the rituals and celebrations that celebrated urban power and legitimacy. In Bruges, the dukes wisely chose issues and events that bespoke their ultimate monopoly on the exercise of authority. One of their strategies was to execute a large number of people for the crime of sodomy so as to express their mastery over the social body and public space. Another was to commemorate with strategic ritual care their victories over urban rebels. The practice was already established by 1409 when Duke John the Fearless ordered the foundation of a service in Bruges to celebrate his victory over the city of Liège. After the renewed punishment

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I8 For the text of the Concessio Carolina in which these measures are promulgated, see A. du Bois and L. de Hondt (eds.), Les coutumes de la ville de Gand (Brussels, 1887), II, 172. ↩︎

of the same city in 1467, Duke Charles the Bold ordered the “perron,” a highly symbolic monument representing the commune of Liège and its judicial autonomy, transferred to Bruges. There it would stay until after the duke’s death in 1477 , to be publicly viewed both as a punishment of the people of Liège and as a clear warning to any Flemish subjects who might be tempted to question the duke’s authority. 19{ }^{19}

A more detailed analysis of the social and political unrest in Ghent during the I430s shows the extent to which the duke and his administration, the rebels, and the urban elite understood the usefulness of space to negotiate and manage conflict. On three occasions, I432, I436, and I440, guild unrest necessitated the duke’s personal intervention. The first incident started a few days before the annual renewal of the aldermen. The previous day, members of the Council of Flanders-the central ducal court in the county-had written to the duke, the chancellor, and other highranking officials that disturbances were expected to occur in Ghent. The next day, armed members of the guilds occupied the grain market, and next the Friday-market, Ghent’s central public square. They also opened the jails, pillaged dwellings of ducal representatives and urban tax receivers, and killed representatives of their own organizations held responsible for the monetary policy that had triggered the uprising. 20{ }^{20}

Both sides in the struggle deployed urban space to win points in the ongoing bargaining. With banners unfurled, the rebels oc-

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19 Wim Blockmans and Esther Doncker, “Self-Representation of Court and City in Flanders and Brabant in the Fifteenth and early Sixteenth Centuries,” in Blockmans and Antheun Janse (eds.), Showing Status: Representation of Social Positions in the Late Middle Age (Turnhout, 1999), 83-111. In a more general context, see Blockmans, “Voracious States and Obstructing Cities: An Aspect of State Formation in Preindustrial Europe,” in Tilly and idem (eds.), Cities and the Rise of States in Europe, A.D. 1000 to 1600 (Boulder, 1989), 233. Brown, “Civil Ritual,” 292-96; Boone, “State Power and Illicit Sexuality”; idem, “Destroying and Reconstructing the City: The Inculcation and Arrogation of Princely Power in the Burgundian-Habsburg Netherlands (I4th-I6th Centuries),” in Martin Gosman, Arjo Vanderjagt, and J. Veenstra (eds.), The Propagation of Power in the Medieval West (Groningen, 1997), 23. On the perrons in general, see Van Uytven, “Flannische Belfiede,” I55. For a soldier’s song that makes clear what the perron represented, see A. J. V. Le Roux de Lincy, Chants historiques et populaires du temps de Charles VII et de Louis XI (Paris, 1857), 142.
20 Letter by maître Gillis van de Woestijne to the duke and the bishop of Tournai in Bruges, Chambres des Comptes, n ∘{ }^{\circ} 21805, f ∘20r∘{ }^{\circ} 20 r^{\circ}, Archives General du Royaume, Brussels (hereinafter acR). The facts of the violent outburst are related by two contemporary narrative sources; additional information comes from ducal correspondence. The looting of the houses had a charivari-like character. See C. P. Serrure and Philippe Blommaert (eds.), Kennyk van ↩︎

cupied the marketplace. The duke kept his newly born son, heir to the throne (who, as it happened, died at four months) in his Ghent residence as a signal of his willingness to negotiate. New deans and aldermen were chosen the day after the rebellion started, while the guilds were occupying the marketplace. They were still there the next day, when the aldermen came to the council to declare they had everything under control. The trouble, in their words, occurred “For the common good, peace, and tranquility of the aforementioned city. They were willing and eager to serve and obey their natural lord in all possible ways as good and loyal subjects are obliged to do.” A week later, the duke pardoned his city during a great official meeting of the three estates in Courtrai. The official charter given to the city on this occasion, and read afterward in Ghent in the duke’s presence, emphasized the way that the confrontation had involved the ritual occupation of space. The same scenario occurred in 1436, when the guilds again in arms, stormed the marketplace even as elaborate written negotiations were underway between them and the duke’s representative. Eventually, the armed artisans left the marketplace and returned home, and the duke granted a general pardon to the city. 21{ }^{21}

At first sight, the scenario seems to have been repeated in I440, ending with the duke pardoning the city for “armes, coursses, assemblees et commocions faictes en notre dicte ville de Gand.” But his “lettre de remission” contained one new element. The duke’s councilors labeled the event as a “very grave contempt and offense against us undertaken against our majesty and lordship with the crime of lese majesté.” This last notion of “lese-majesté”

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Vlaanderen (Ghent, 1940), II 33. The other narrative source is written by an Ypres alderman, Olivier van Dixmude (ed. J. J. Lambin), Meskwaedige gebeurtenissen (Ypres, 1835), 137. 21 The correspondence by the Council of Flanders kept the duke well informed: Chambres des Comptes. n ∘21805{ }^{\circ} 21805, f∘20r∘−v∘\mathrm{f}^{\circ} 20 \mathrm{r}^{\circ}-\mathrm{v}^{\circ}, f∘\mathrm{f}^{\circ} 20bis r∘−v∘\mathrm{r}^{\circ}-\mathrm{v}^{\circ}, AGR. Monique Sommé, “Le cérémonial de la naissance et de la mort de l’enfant princier à la cour de Bourgogne au XVe siècle,” Publications du Centre Européen d’études Bouguignonnes (XIVe-XVIe s.) (Neuchâtel, 1994), 87, 93-97; Chambres des Comptes, n ∘{ }^{\circ} 21805, f ∘{ }^{\circ} 20bis r∘−v∘\mathrm{r}^{\circ}-\mathrm{v}^{\circ}, AGR. Van Dixmude’s chronicle, which leaves no doubt about the presence of representatives of the three orders alongside the duke, the duchess, and the lord chancellor-bishop of Tournai, corrects Blockmans, Handelingen van de Leden en van de Staten van Vlaanderen. Regering van Filips de Goede (I419-1487). I. Tot de onderwerping van Brugge (4 maart 1438) (Brussels, 1990), 558-559, who counts the meeting of Courtrai as a mere meeting of the Leden van Vlaanderen. Charters n ∘{ }^{\circ} 550, Municipal Archives of Ghent; Chambres des Comptes, n ∘{ }^{\circ} 21807, f ∘{ }^{\circ} i iv ∘{ }^{\circ}, AGR; charters n ∘{ }^{\circ} 572, Municipal Archives of Ghent. ↩︎

is redolent with secular and ecclesiastical concepts. Although most fully visible in speeches during the reign of Charles the Bold, this language had its precedent during his father’s reign. 22{ }^{22}

The context behind this inflation in political vocabulary is clear. The peace negotiations between France, England, and Bur-gundy-held in Arras beginning in 1435-the aborted Calais campaign, and the subsequent rebellion of Bruges in I436 all indicate that the future of Burgundian state-making resided in the Netherlands. A confrontation with urban power was inevitable, and the battlefield had to be, above all, urban space. The I430s and I440s witnessed several examples of this tension, most notably, the exemplary public punishment of Bruges after the revolt of 1436-1438 and the effort to charm the Ghent elite by involving them in the gradual upgrading of the city’s ducal residences. The strategy failed, thanks, in part, to the weakness of Ghent’s elite, crushed as they were between the fiscal demands of the duke and the claims made by the city’s artisans. The Ghent war of I45I1453 was the inevitable outcome. 23{ }^{23}

In a last-ditch attempt to reach a diplomatic settlement, the French king sent his ambassadors to Flanders with a text that cunningly reviewed the range of actions open to them to instill fear and bolster their authority. In principle, they accorded the dukewho had started to dream more or less openly of kingship-the right to destroy any city in open revolt against his authority. They drew their inspiration for such a threat from classical and biblical texts, from Roman law, from the rules of war, and even from urban customary law. To press the point, the duke destroyed Liège in 1468 on the heels of a violent and audacious rebellion. The ducal propaganda delivered to Ghent and other major Flemish cities made deliberate use of the spectacular case of Liège. Ghent showed its deference to the duke by surrendering its guild banners and closing several of its gates-accommodations that he had long

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22 Charters n ∘{ }^{\circ} 582, Municipal Archives of Ghent. On the context of this pardon, see Boone, Gent en de Bourgondische hertogen, 224-225. On the precedent for Charles the Bold’s language, see Blockmans, “Crisme de leze majesté. Les idées politiques de Charles le Téméraire,” in Jean-Marie Duvosquel, Jacque Nazer, and André Vanrie (eds.), Les Pays-Bas Bourguignons. Histoire et institutions. Mélanges André Uyttebrouck (Brussels 1996), 7I-8I.
23 On the Bruges’ revolt and repression, see Dumoyn, De Brugse opstand van I436-I438 (Kortrijk, 1997), 267-295. Concerning the upgrading of the Ghent residents, see Boone and de Hemptinne, “Espace urbain et ambitions princières: les présences matérielles de l’autorité princière dans le Gand médiéval (I2e siècle-I 540),” in Werner Paravicini (ed.), Zeremoniell und Raum (Sigmaringen, 1997), 288-295. ↩︎

sought. That the German cities of Nuremberg and Frankfurt-AmMain went so far as to ask the aldermen of Aachen and Colonge for reports about the fate of Liège underlines how strongly Charles the Bold’s handling of the crises reverberated in the region. The reply told of church looting, the slaughter and drowning of inhabitants, and acts of rape and pillage. Burgundian and surrounding cities scrambled to adopt postures of submission. 24{ }^{24}

Destroying or altering functions belonging to the urban patrimony were not the only ways Burgundian and Habsburg rulers dealt with potentially rebellious cities. The destruction or submission of Ghent and Liège were good publicity for the Burgundian dynasty; these cities also had a reputation, a judicial system, and collective identity vulnerable to state power. Charles V’s punishment of Ghent in 1540 following its ill-fated revolt is a classic example. The jurist Louis van Schore, after having found Ghent guilty of lese-majesté, first proposed to inflict the kind of destruction on the city that Rome had inflicted on Carthage, but since this project encountered serious opposition, Charles resorted to the old recipes. His settlement, known as the Caroline Concession, was nothing less than a plan to remodel Ghent by remaking its public life. The old abbey of St. Baafs was to be transformed into a military citadel according to an Italian model (it eventually became the so-called Spaniards’ castle). In a symbolic gesture, the emperor ordered many of the city’s old gates and walls torn down to provide stones for the new construction. Nor was the intervention in Ghent the first one during Duke Charles’ reign. Shortly after the destruction of Liège, a similar stronghold symbolizing princely power was erected there, too. 25{ }^{25}

24 Both parties, ducal councillors and Gentenars, referred to the case of Bruges during the final negotiations (Lille in I452) before military strength decided the outcome of the conflict. See Boone, “Diplomatie et violence d’état. La sentence rendue par les ambassadeurs et conseillers du roi de France, Charles VII, concernant le confit entre Philippe le Bon, duc de Bourgogne, et Gand en 1452,” Bulletin de la commission royale d’histoire, CLVI (1990), 35. Idem, “Destroying and Reconstructing the City.” For the ducal propaganda, see the correspondence of the duke with the great cities in Paravicini, Der Briefwechsel Karls des Kübnen (14331477) (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), I, 335-339. For Ghent’s submission, see the events related by Victor Fris (ed.), Dagboek van Gent van 1447 tot 1470 met een vervolg van 1477 tot 1515 (Ghent, 1904), II, 217-220; idem, “La restriction de Gand (13 juillet 1468),” Bulletin der Maatschappij van Geschied-en Oudheidkunde te Gent, XXXI (1923), 59-142. The letters from Nuremberg and Frankfurt-Am-Main appear, edited, in E. Fairon, Régestes de la Cité de Liège. IV. 1456 à 1482 (Liège, 1939), 307-312.
25 Audièntie, 1627 , under the title “declaration des abuz commis par ceulx de Gand en l’an XV’ XXXIX,” l′′9v′′l^{\prime \prime} 9 v^{\prime \prime}, AGr. The list of accusations leveled by van Schore against Ghent served as inspiration for the policy adopted by the duke of Alva against the city of Antwerp in 1567.

Charles V, however, was not an innovator. His great-grandfather Charles the Bold, whose entry of 1467 had interrupted the procession of St. Lievin, had conceived a plan to punish Ghent not only by imposing a fine and remodeling the city’s institutions but equally by erecting a citadel on the site of the abbey of St. Bavo. This operation involved de Brimeu, his close councilor and advisor, who shortly before had set up a similar operation in Liège. Why Charles the Bold chose the site of St. Bavo is not known. Given his negative experience with the procession of St. Lieven, he may taken aim at this saint’s cult, since the abbey was home to its relics. 26{ }^{26}

The reconstruction of a city was equally as important to ducal politics as its destruction, insofar as it promoted the prince as protector of the bien publique. In addition to economic motives, the opportunity to communicate a political message was extremely valuable. Charles rearranged Liège’s urban space just enough to express his political aims. Its ecclesiastical buildings, especially churches, were looted but not destroyed. The city’s reconstruction was organized and centered around these ecclesiastical buildings. The perron, symbol of urban resistance par excellence, was reconstructed only after 1477, when the sudden death of Duke

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See the reference in the letters of Cardinal de Granvelle in E. Poullet (ed.), Correspondence du cardinal de Granvelle 1583-1583 (Brussels, 1880), II, 45. See also Guido Marnef, Antwerpen in de tijd van de Reformatie. Ondergronds protestantisme in een handelsmetropool 1550-1577 (Antwerp, 1996), 153. Recently the importance of St. Baaf’s transformation has been illustrated by Laleman, “Woord, beeld en materie. Het Sint-Baafsdorp in Gent,” in Joris de Zutter, Leen Charles, and André Capiteyn (eds.), Qui valet ingenio. Liber amicorum Johan Decavele (Ghent, 1996), 289-317. The Italian example is the castle built by Francesco Sforza shortly after 1450 in Milan (critically judged by Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 20). See Patrick Boucheron, “Les expressions monumentales du pouvoir princier à Milan au temps de Francesco Sforza (1450-1466),” Les princes et le pouvoir au moyen âge. XXIIe (Paris, 1993), 122123. Among the Italian engineers put to work in Ghent was Donato Buoni di Pellezuoli from Bergamo, who designed the new walls of Antwerp, approved by Charles V in 1540. See Soly, Urbanisme et kapitalisme te Antwerpen in de 16de eeuw. De stedchouwkundige en industriële ondernemingen van Gilbert van Schoonbeke (Brussels, 1997), 198. Charles Steur, Mémoire sur les troubles de Gand de 1540 (Brussels, 1834), 151-152. For an eyewitness account of how the emperor chose the abbey as the site for the citadel, see Louis Prosper Gachard (ed.), Relation des troubles de Gand sous Charles-Quint par un anonyme, suivie de trois cent trente documents inédits sur cet événement (Brussels, 1846), ior. Paravicini, Guy de Brimeu. Der burgundische Staat und seine adlige Führungsschicht unter Karl dem Köhnen (Bonn, 1975), 302-307: In 1469, Guy de Brimeu, governor of Liège, took possession of the island in the Meuse, known as the Ile de la cité, and rebaptized it for the occasion as Isle le duc lez Liege. On the island a citadel was constructed. 26 On the incidents of 1467, see Arnade, “Secular Charisma,” 69-94. De Brimeu stayed in Ghent when the plan to punish the city was discussed. See Paravicini, Guy de Brimeu, 46r. ↩︎

Charles triggered a panic among Burgundian officials. Duke Charles had positioned himself as forgiving father, offering to the cathedral St. Lambert in Liège a golden reliquary representing St. George and Charles the Bold. The accounts of Charles’ household reveal that in the aftermath of the first victory over Liège in 1467, the duke visited the cathedral to venerate the relics of St. Lambert, the patron saint of Liège. During the dramatic days of the sacking of the city in 1468 , the duke is said to have personally protected the relics of St. Lambert, though the contents of the church’s treasury were allotted to his half-brother Antoine. The duke finally returned the statue containing the relics in I47I, thus emphasizing his role as protector of the saint, the church, and of the city and imposing his authority and his order. By giving back to Liège its most precious relic, Charles dangled his almost divine will over the city’s fate. 27{ }^{27}

Deliberate intervention in the urban landscape, as part of a larger punitive strategy, was a standard prop deployed by the state to communicate its political will. The state’s destruction of a city’s symbolic physical structures, and/or interference with its law, its religious tradition, or even its name could serve as a signal that henceforth the prince ruled the city.

The Flemish cities of the high Middle Ages were largely a spatial realm of locations inflected with economic, political, and cultural importance. Urban social groups vied with one another and with regional and state authorities by making these spaces as theirs. The original geographical core of the commune was constantly refashioned as patricians, guildsmen, and representatives of the state crafted their ritual statements of power. Newly empowered elites did not so much redraw the spatial map as appropriate the established sites and symbols of authority. What historians working in the Pirennean tradition classified as class warfare between patricians and guildsmen during the fourteenth century indeed involved fundamental economic issues, but it was more generally tied up with broader issues of power and authority.

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27 See the lengthy description of Liège’s rearrangement in Paravicini, Guy de Brimeau, 198207. The statue given by Duke Charles depicts him kneeling on a cushion and wearing a full suit of armor. The saint, also in a suit of armor, is raising his helmet in salutation; his features strikingly resemble the duke’s. See Hugo Van Der Velden, The Donor’s Image: Gerard Loyet and the Votive Portraits of Charles the Bold (Turhout, 2000). ↩︎

More than market enclaves, cities were complex built environments comprised of zones rich in meaning and material.

In the fifteenth century, urban space became an even sharper element of division and strife because of the increasing interference of princely power in the financial and spatial core of the city. The Burgundian and Habsburg princes were no longer content with such standard rituals as the processional entries in which they merely embellished urban space but instead actively sought to redraw the cities’ boundaries. They betrayed their imperial ambitions in the process. The first duke of Burgundy-or “Fils du roy de France,” as he called himself-and the subsequent members of his dynasty, managed urban space as if they were “roy, empereur en son royaume.” Eventually, Philip the Good, posed as “non roy, mais de courage empereur.” This appeal to sovereign power had great consequences for the relationship between prince and city and for the way urban space was invoked to sustain this relation. From the Burgundian dukes emerged a direct line to the absolutist politics of the Habsburg rulers. Charles the Bold’s demolition of Liège and his punishment of Ghent directly inspired the duke of Alva’s attempt to retain the cities of the Netherlands for Philip II. That this same king was finally rejected by his subjects is proof that the communal ideal was strong enough to withstand such fierce attacks.